Cisco Revs IOS on Catalyst 6500s

Cisco Systems has announced an update to the operating system in use in its flagship switches that the company says will increase uptime and enhance efficiency.

The company marked several key areas of improvement to its Internetwork Operating System (IOS) running on its flagship Catalyst 6500 Series switches.

Cisco says that modular Cisco IOS subsystems "now run in independent, self-healing processes," which it anticipates will allow for faster fault containment and recovery with "Process Fault Containment and Stateful Process Restart" features. The improvement will also allow for subsystem In-Service Software Upgrades.

The company also noted that process-level, automated policy control is now possible through integration of its Cisco IOS Embedded Event Manager (EEM).

American Century Investments trial tested Cisco IOS Software Modularity for the Catalyst 6500. "We estimate that Cisco IOS Software Modularity will reduce the time required to upgrade software on our company's more than 60 Catalyst 6500s from six weeks, given the need for planned outages, which in our case could only occur on the weekends, to less than six hours," said Dave Rogers, the company's senior IT network manager.

Cisco IOS Software Modularity for the Catalyst 6500 Series switches will be delivered on the existing Cisco IOS 12.2SX release. It is expected to be available in Q4 CY05 on the Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 720 and in Q1 CY06 on the Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 32. No additional licensing is required for customers with Cisco SMARTnet contracts.